On the plane ride here I only brought one book with me: David Leavitt's The Lost Language of Cranes. After I read it and moved into Fresche Blanc, the book was put on a shelf and practically forgotten except when I had to reach around it to grab my cellphone. But this weekend I offered to lend it to Ge since she lent me her copy of Michel Tremblay's Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tôle and it has since been sitting on my desk, waiting.
There is one particular passage in the book that I remember better than all the others and last night I picked up the book and found it:
Silently they moved on toward Brad's building, Philip remembering that uncomfortable night back when it had still been winter. Now a warm breeze blew. They walked ungloved, unhatted, without umbrellas. And Philip thought how nice it must be to be able, like Eliot, just to take off from a place you've come to call home, to eject yourself from the complext and dangerous network of friends, lovers, apartments, to sever all ties and leap into the starling newness of the unknown. Sometimes he tried to imagine doing it, just buying a ticket somewhere, say, to Paris, and going there, and he could almost feel that shock, the relief of knowing no one, smelling strange smells, feeling new breezes. But then he would remember that he hardly knew the language, that he had no friends to stay with in Paris; he would realize that once there, he'd have to begin again a ceaseless cycle of worrying - about laundry, about eating out alone and being mistreated by the waiters, about finding a boyfriend. Such concerns apparently didn't faze Eliot. He knew people everywhere, always had places to stay. And once again Philip envisioned Eliot in a trenchcoat, riding on a fast-moving train through some unspeakably beautiful landscape, with no luggage; he was standing on a sort of old-fashioned caboose balcony, the wind blowing through his hair. Probably he was going to Venice. Philip imagined Eliot and his lover, Thierry, riding a gondola through a jade-colored canal, strange, barnacle-caked towers rising above them on all sides. Some people left, some were left; it seemd the world requred the two extremes, for balance. There would be no refuge in travel for Philip; he was too much of a coward for adventure, too yoked to routine and familiar comforts. Doomed, Eliot had said. Perhaps that was what he meant, as he sat writing in that dusty room in the Fifth, smelling "that Paris smell." Perhaps he was simply thinking of his own good fortune, and had written "doomed," and added "to happiness" to cut the cruelty.
Just as I did when I first arrived, I find myself wondering which I am: an Eliot or a Philip. And just as I did then, I still have no answer.
There is one particular passage in the book that I remember better than all the others and last night I picked up the book and found it:
Silently they moved on toward Brad's building, Philip remembering that uncomfortable night back when it had still been winter. Now a warm breeze blew. They walked ungloved, unhatted, without umbrellas. And Philip thought how nice it must be to be able, like Eliot, just to take off from a place you've come to call home, to eject yourself from the complext and dangerous network of friends, lovers, apartments, to sever all ties and leap into the starling newness of the unknown. Sometimes he tried to imagine doing it, just buying a ticket somewhere, say, to Paris, and going there, and he could almost feel that shock, the relief of knowing no one, smelling strange smells, feeling new breezes. But then he would remember that he hardly knew the language, that he had no friends to stay with in Paris; he would realize that once there, he'd have to begin again a ceaseless cycle of worrying - about laundry, about eating out alone and being mistreated by the waiters, about finding a boyfriend. Such concerns apparently didn't faze Eliot. He knew people everywhere, always had places to stay. And once again Philip envisioned Eliot in a trenchcoat, riding on a fast-moving train through some unspeakably beautiful landscape, with no luggage; he was standing on a sort of old-fashioned caboose balcony, the wind blowing through his hair. Probably he was going to Venice. Philip imagined Eliot and his lover, Thierry, riding a gondola through a jade-colored canal, strange, barnacle-caked towers rising above them on all sides. Some people left, some were left; it seemd the world requred the two extremes, for balance. There would be no refuge in travel for Philip; he was too much of a coward for adventure, too yoked to routine and familiar comforts. Doomed, Eliot had said. Perhaps that was what he meant, as he sat writing in that dusty room in the Fifth, smelling "that Paris smell." Perhaps he was simply thinking of his own good fortune, and had written "doomed," and added "to happiness" to cut the cruelty.
Just as I did when I first arrived, I find myself wondering which I am: an Eliot or a Philip. And just as I did then, I still have no answer.
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